Tentative settlement agreement reached in lawsuit over...

1of4Bexar County Chief Jail Administrator Raul Banasco demonstrates a new video visitation system in August 2016. County employee Teresa Guerrero-Livengood is shown on the other end of the call.Photo: John Davenport, San Antonio Express-News

2of4Bexar County's video visitation system launched in September 2016.Photo: John Davenport, San Antonio Express-News

3of4This is the old face to face visitation center inside the Bexar County Jail where inmates can visit with family members.Photo: Photos by John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News

For Oumer Salim, video visits were the only practical to way to see his brother in prison. Sure, they were pricey — almost $10 for 30 minutes. But with Salim in the Fort Worth suburb of Colleyville, and his brother more than 1,100 miles away in an Ohio penitentiary, there weren’t a lot of alternatives.

So — like hundreds of thousands of other inmates’ families — Salim paid up. Eventually, he realized he was getting ripped off, as the expensive calls would get cut off early, according to court records. When Salim couldn’t figure out a way to get his money back, he filed a class-action lawsuit.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Sherman greenlit a preliminary settlement agreement awarding one free call credit to anyone who used video visitation services through the company JPay since 2009. It’s small, but still a win for prisoners’ families, who routinely bear many of the financial burdens of incarceration, traveling miles for in-person visit, paying top-dollar for prison phones, forking over money for expensive commissary items and ponying up the cost of added perks like video visitation.

“I’m pleased that JPay agreed to an amicable resolution and allowed a vehicle for people to get their money back,” said Dallas attorney Bruce Steckler, who is representing Salim in the suit. “We were able to achieve exactly what he wanted.”

The legal wrangling started in October, when Salim filed his claim in the Eastern District of Texas. Twice a month, Salim said, he’d been scheduling video visits with his brother, paying $9.90 each time. But his sessions repeatedly got cut off early. Sometimes it was just a few minutes, according to his attorney; sometimes it was much more than that.

In total, Salim estimated that he lost just under $300. But, given the number of people who use the company’s video visitation nationwide, attorneys estimated the total claims would exceed $5 million.

Typically, video visits are offered by a single vendor that contracts with a given jail or prison. At the Noble Correctional Institution in Ohio - where Salim’s brother was incarcerated - that vendor was JPay, a Florida-based company offering “affordable correctional services” including everything from email to money deposits to video visits.

After a few months of negotiations between Salim’s attorneys and JPay, earlier this year both parties in the lawsuit reached a settlement agreement.

"JPay has agreed to issue each class member a transferable video visitation credit, as well as establish a process through which purchasers can report any future issues with video visits to obtain a credit," Salim’s attorneys wrote in February, adding that the settlement “squarely address the issues raised” and gives the inmates’ families “exactly what they allege they have lost.”

The settlement does not require the company to admit fault.

On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant III preliminarily approved the agreement, calling the proposal “fair” and “reasonable.”

If the judge signs off on a final approval of the settlement later this year, families will have 60 days to use the free call credit or transfer it to someone else. Though it can benefit families of prisoners anywhere JPay is used, it won’t impact those with loved ones in the Texas prison system.

The state’s 104 prisons use JPay for the email function - not the video visits. Still, Jennifer Erschabek of the Texas Inmate Families Association said the settlement offered hope to inmates’ families impacted by high prices and monopolies - even as it stood as a reminder of some of the problems inherent in corrections services.

“It’s a shame that people who are incarcerated are in in a position where they can be taken advantage of,” she said. “Families have no say or choice in these matters, but it’s what we have to live with.”

Keri Blakinger covers breaking news, prisons and the death penalty. She was hired at the Houston Chronicle through the Hearst Fellows program. She graduated from Cornell University and covered county and town government at the Ithaca Times before moving to breaking news at the New York Daily News.